Making Mobile

In app purchasing was added to Voice Text and Audio Control Lite. The updates to Voice Text brings the ability to remove the ads and provide users the ability to enjoy texting by voice with a cleaner and much improved experience. Audio Control Lite was updated with all the missing bug fixes from Audio Control over the last few months. Along with the updated UI, bug fixes, and improved user experience, the ability to purchase individual features of Audio Control now is available.

January 19, 2013

Pep Talk was updated to support better widget color control and re-sizing Many other apps were also updated, most with minor bug fixes. Most notably My TV Shows, which was long overdue for a few fixes.

January 12, 2013

Big update was published for Audio Control. Introducing Audio Control Plugins. A Wifi, Location, and Charging plugin were also published. These are only supported in Audio Control 2.0.9 and later. This update brings a more consistent UI, bug fixes, a new timer picker (quite proud that), added features to the day picker, and other things I cannot remember at the moment of this writing. All this work now means I can take a break!

Voice Text was updated to version 1.3.2 which brings 2 widgets, 1 shortcut, a better search contact by voice methodology, updated landscape look, fixes for ads not displaying on some devices, and a few fixes.

Audio Control was also updated to version 2.0.5 which brings profile highlights on the profile widgets for the active profiles, headset fixes (wired and bluetooth), updated theme, Russian localization, and bug fixes. I also was able to add a developer api so other apps can utilize Audio Controls audio profiles. There has been a policy change to the way wired headsets work in that they will now only apply an audio profile and not revert back to the previous volumes. This is because of the Google Music application which is causing the issues. Bluetooth headsets will still apply and revert back audio profiles.

November 7, 2012

Audio Control updated to 2.0.3 which added a HD theme, improved graphics and colors, notification profiles and shortcuts!

October 14, 2012

Audio Control update 2.0 was released. This version brings a redesigned UI which should make managing audio profiles a bit easier.

October 2012

A big update was released for Audio Control which brings version 1.9.0. This update was focused on making Audio Control smarter. In this update you will find fixes for several different devices, including many Samsung and Motorola phones.

Also included in this update is support for custom ROMs and Kernels which have the ability to unlink notification and ringer volumes. The System volume is also now supported for Android 4.0+ devices. If the link/unlink volumes checkbox is pressed then the device must be rebooted or in Audio Control > Settings, the gear icon in the upper right hand corner must be pressed. This will preform some tests and update Audio Control based on the changes.

Widgets were updated to support the various changes and to be more intelligent. Audio Control is now more intelligent detecting when your device has a different configuration than the standards Google provides.

The settings menu was revamped. Many settings were removed because Audio Control can now intelligently detect things like your time format preferences. Or if you have separate ringer and notifications.

Profiles can now be renamed! Lots of users have asked for this feature and now it’s here. Just long press a profile, select “Rename” and enter the new name.

A few minor UI tweaks were also added.

You can now change the background of widgets from Audio Control > Settings. You will see a new color button, and when pressed a dialog will open. Choose a color and you will see the results updated in real time on the widget example in Settings.

Dutch and Hebrew translations have been updated and added. A special thanks to Koen for the Dutch updates and to אלישיב סבח for adding Hebrew.

Finally, I was able to reduce the code base of Audio Control significantly which will help Audio Control be less prone to errors and easier to upgrade/fix.

July 2012

Some recent changes to Audio Control have occurred between Gingerbread (GB) and Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) which some users have had questions about. You probably noticed that ICS looks very different from GB, and that is 100% correct. Some of these changes affect the way Audio Control behaves and puts limitations on what Audio Control can do.

Here is a short list of the changes that directly affect Audio Control.

On most devices the System volume is goneThe ringer and notification volumes have been merged into one volumeGlobal vibrate settings are gone, each application is responsible for their own vibrate settings

What this amounts to is that volume applications, like Audio Control, can no longer control the vibrate settings for the entire device. Every application will have its own vibrate settings and should respect the ringer setting. For example: if you have the ringer setting set to silent no application should vibrate. However if you have the ringer setting to vibrate those applications that allow for vibration should vibrate. And if you have the ringer setting set to normal then it is up to the individual application on how to behave.

Audio Control can give you more control over the way an application’s vibration is handled. Starting with version 1.7.7 you can tell Audio Control how you want your application’s vibration to feel. Setup custom vibrate patterns and have them tied to you audio profiles. When a profile is applied so will all the vibrate settings for that profile. Each application can have a unique way of notifying you via vibration. This feature uses an Accessibility Service which must be enabled by the user to be used. This service allows Audio Control to listen for when a notification occurs, then checks to see if that’s in the list of vibrate patterns previously set up. If so Audio Control will vibrate per the setup. Remember to turn off the in app vibrate. For example if you use Audio Control’s vibrate feature and leave on the Messaging vibrate you will receive a vibration from both apps, so turn off the Messaging vibrate.

There has been a small uproar in the Android community in regards to the merging of the ringer and notification volumes. While I don’t speak for Google, my guess is that this is an attempt to clean up the user interface. While the need to clean up Android was well past due merging two great features that were incredibly useful was a silly thing to do. It takes a lot of control from users and developers with minimal benefit from a design standpoint. That’s what happens when you let a UX team make big decisions

I have added a custom ringer which allow users to have separate volumes for both the ringer and notification volumes. While this control cannot be adjusted outside Audio Control the fact that profiles can be applied in such a variety of ways makes up for this. Remember that as of Android 4.0 there is only one volume for both notifications and the ringer. Audio Control simply listens for when a phone call occurs and adjusts the notification/ringer volume to whatever the custom ringer is set to, then when the call is finished, readjusts it to it’s previous state.